The music…
Bill: Well, for Tom and me, I guess I can speak for both of us, music has been a very big part of our lives, it always has been. Our stepfather made music himself, and he played live a lot. We started going to concerts really early, looked at it, and at some point we started to get interested, and I guess we were like, seven. And then Tom started to play the guitar. We've always been supported, music has always been very important for us.
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Georg: Music has always accompanied me as well; I grew up hearing the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, I also went to concerts from ACDC and stuff at a very early age. Music has always been a part of my life.
Gustav: Yes, same for me with bands like the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and they kind of inspired me to play the drums.
Inspirations…
Tom: I started playing the guitar because of my stepfather, so for me it wasn't really a band, it was just that, like Bill said, we went to concerts at an early age, and then I say my stepfather play the guitar. And one day he just hung the guitar in our room and said; "just start when you feel like it", and I'd always found electric guitars really cool and just started playing. And that's how it started for us, it wasn't caused by some band.
Georg: I'd always listened to a lot of music, and became interested in it because of that, but I never thought "I absolutely have to play the bass, because I think the bassist from the Rolling Stones is really cool"…
Tom: It's always the same story; there are lots of bands with one instrument missing…
Georg: And that's the bass
Tom: Because no one wants to play the bass, till there's someone crazy enough to say, "Okay, I'll play the bass". And that's how it went with Georg too.
First cover?
Bill: [background] Our own sound…
Tom: As a band we haven't covered very much, we never really played a coversong - with little exceptions - and I got to say; I almost immediately started writing my own chords on the guitar and never imitated anything. Except for one song, I think it was "Knocking on Heavens Door", that's like the classic song every bands starts with. [Georg agrees] It was also the first thing I could play in the guitar, but after that I started collecting my own ideas and play something of my own. Since then we haven't covered anything anymore.
The meeting
Bill: Well, we've really played music together (he and Tom) and performed at city festivals and stuff. And I had this silly keyboard and just gave it a go; we were always looking for a bassist and a drummer. And we performed in Grönninger Bad, that's a very little club, it kind of was our favourite club, and they were there and watched us; it was just a coincidence actually.
Tom: You could say they begged us afterwards [Georg: oohhh… nonsense!], they saw us and said, "people, I simply have to play in your band, give me a chance!". Well, at least, Geor did. So we said, "Well, alright… let's do it. We're already looking for a bassist and a drummer, let's try this". And then we arranged to practice, and since then we're together. It's been about…
Gustav: Seven years.
Tom: Yeah, nearly seven years. And it worked very well since then.
The name?
Bill: Yes, well… we've thought about the name for a long time. We used to call ourselves Devilish; no idea why we chose that name, we hadn't really thought it through; it was just our name. And at some point we said, "okay, now we really want a name that has a meaning and fits us and symbolises everything. And we're all really the city-type; we all really like big cities, and "far away" and stuff… And somehow we ended up with Tokio. Tokio has a good sound, and it's a big city. And Hotel, well, hotels are at the moment our closest thing to a home, it's a kind of symbol that accompanies us all the time. And yeah, we used to really like sleeping in hotels [Tom: *laughs* used to…] and travelling, and that's why we're called Tokio Hotel.
The success…
Gustav: That was in 2005…
Bill: That was unbelievable for us; just bringing out a single, just having a song that many people can listen to. It was just incomprehensible, just seeing that CD in the stores and then suddenly it got started and a lot of people were interested in our music, and suddenly we were on the front page of a magazine we used to buy ourselves and stuff. And that's really… very very strange; our entire life had changed from one day to the next. We couldn't go to school anymore, we were travelling al the time, always stayed in hotels; we just went from town to town and most of the time we didn't even really see the cities, because most of the time were in like three cities on the same day. It was a complete different life then we used to lead but it was exactly what we'd always wished for. Sometimes we really had to pinch each other and check if this was really happening, and it's really us… that we - that we're really the ones being so lucky; being able to experience all this. We've had so much luck…
The price of success…
Tom: Of course there are things you have to get used to. At first you have to be able to say, in between all the stress, "okay, now we need some days off, we have to let it all sink in" and you have to be able to enjoy it. You have to be careful of that in the beginning, because you're running from one appointment to the other, without really thinking about it. And then there's not seeing your family, not seeing your friends, when you're on the road for a very long time you're not able to just go to the pub with a friend and get drunk. Everything we do is with the four of us.
Georg: And you don't get to see pets…
Tom: Indeed, and you really have to get used to that. So when we've got spare time to visit family, friends, pets and what more, we really know what we're… how we enjoy that. We're enjoying it much more now then we used to. And of course that are things that you long to a bit; seeing your family again and stuff. But there are also plenty of things you don't really long to, like getting up at 5h30 every morning and going to school. We never really liked that and of course we're happy that we can make music all the time now -
Georg: And can get up at 8h now [laughs]
Tom: [Laughs] Yeah, get up at 8h now… But just making music and not having to see all those horrible teachers all the time; that's already one of the many things that are way better now.
School?
Tom: Bill and I are still kind of going to school; we still have to continue, and of course we want to, we still want to do our finals. We just do it a bit at the side, but of course we're glad that we don't have to keep to such a tight schedule.
Time off?
Bill: Sleeping… actually we just sleep [all laugh]. Yes, time off means sleeping late, because we're always travelling, so you have to get used to sleeping on airplanes, sleeping in the tourbus… In the rhythm we're in now, we really have to make sure that we find rest at the most unusual places, because those are really the only places we can withdraw ourselves and truly have time off. And that's why we enjoy having time off in which we can sleep late in our own beds, eat all day, watch TV all day; that's our relax-schedule.
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